davidbroad

Maybe the Star will restore interest in the Grouping period where the GWR ran most trains in multiple portions. I have a book on 1930 carriage workings and I cannot find a singe long distance train which did not feature at least two portions for different places, It does however show a lot of 6 and 7 coach main line expresses, a manageable length for many of us. There was a daily trip by North Road's star to Exeter via Okehampton and the SR route on an SR passenger train in the 1950's, balanced by a SR pacific working along the sea wall to keep crews familiar with the alternative route, and Bath Road's Star often pulled the Merchant Venturer from Weston to Temple Meads where it came off and a Castle plus dining car etc came on, so don't assume 4062 went hurtling through Sonning Cutting, it didn't, it just went back on Bath Road shed. Worst thing about the video of the star I saw was the huge gap between loco and Tender, completely unnecessary. Twenty Five years ago I altered Triang Halls to have a 2mm gap between loco and tender and they are fine on 18" radius curves, so why the massive gap? If the smokebox was 2mm too long you would moan so why ignore this? Picture of a Manor plus 3500 gallon tender attached, also my tired old hall, looking sad now but still storms up 1 in 30 gradients with 7 Mk 1s

Where are the vacuum pipes on the fitted one? It's actually a very good model, especially the duckets and the windows which give that "See through" almost greenhouse like end view. I made a hybrid Airfix superstructure on a mainlne chassis for my garden line as the Airfix chassis just isn't robust enough for serious running.